Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Needly looked at her in horror! Was that it? Of course it was. Oh, Grandma. She gritted her teeth and desperately tried to think of some way she could help. She looked up to meet Xulai’s eyes, full of understanding. Xulai nodded, shrugged, held her hands open, the meaning clear. There was too much going on, all at once, to deal with this now, but she would help.

  Xulai muttered something, and Fixit looked intently at her. “Xulai?”

  “It was hearing Grandma use the word ‘children,’ Fixit. Since the Edges are responsible for a lot of the trouble going on, and we’re considering retaliation, we need to remember it’s not just men in there; there are probably women and children, too, perhaps women and children who had nothing to do with giants and mechanical whales and possibly should be removed and given a chance at something else?”

  “No reason not to.”

  The door opened again as Precious Wind came in from outside to announce triumphantly, “They think it’s perfectly possible to copy the organ once we have one to copy from.” She turned toward Fixit. “It seems they can analyze and study it while it’s in place, no need for any kind of surgery. Their machines can scan and duplicate. The Griffins aren’t identical to one another, but the ones like Sun-­wings are very similar, genetically, and they don’t think rejection would be an insurmountable problem once the first one is adapted. We have to take our three visitors to Tingawa, of course.”

  Fixit remarked, “We? Our? Including you?”

  Precious Wind flushed. “If you don’t mind. I’d like to go, too. And, just by the way, we still aren’t sure where the Griffins originated, though everyone seems sure it was the Edgers.”

  “The nice ones simply seem too nice to have been created by Edgers,” Needly said. “If they did create any, they did the bad ones. Please don’t forget what I told you about the bad ones?”

  Fixit spoke. “Bad ones? Some are . . . evil?”

  Needly explained while Fixit made notes on his memo leaf.

  “I will add this to list,” said Fixit. “Where are creatures now?”

  “The sixteen females we know about are in Tingawa,” said Precious Wind. “They admit there may be others somewhere in the world, but all those they know of are there.” She turned toward Needly. “Tingawa advised me that all ten of the unnamed Griffins are awaiting the arrival of the Namers. I gave them the news that Willum is recovering.”

  Needly shivered at the memory. “I thought . . . maybe the emperor or somebody would do it?”

  “Oh, the emperor is quite willing to do so, Needly. After you and Willum come and conduct a ceremony so he will know how to do it in the future.”

  Needly cried, “Oh no, but . . .”

  Precious Wind crowed, “I can’t wait to witness the ceremony!”

  Xulai and Abasio, both of whom remembered Needly’s vivid description of soot-­striped faces and bonging and eeeai, eeeai, ohwa being chanted, could not hide their grins as they thought of Xulai’s very dignified grandfather, emperor of Tingawa, naming Griffins. Oh, they wanted to be there to watch!

  Precious Wind went on: “Also, they have a solution for reproduction during the period between now and the little ones’ maturity. The variation among all the Griffins is minuscule, except for the sequence that identifies the Despos lineage. Tingawa thinks it possible to use a few cells from the baby male to sequence and build fertile sperm. Interesting?”

  “Artificial inseminating?” cried Fixit. “How good if so!” And of course there’s the very nice male Griffin that Self has stashed in the mountains, far to the south. He’s been sleeping there about five hundred years, but he can be awakened and introduced to the ladies at any time. “When Willum is recovered I will take you both to Tingawa so you can teach the emperor how to name Griffins.”

  Precious Wind said, “And yes, Needly. They will use cells only from the list of approved donors. And yes, before you ask, the baby male can provide what we would call the Y chromosome in humans, so they won’t all hatch girls.”

  Needly refused to consider another naming ceremony. Not today. “Precious Wind, how can we find out where the Griffins were made and who made them? We’re pretty sure it was done in the Edges, but there must have been at least two locations to have ended up with these two, very different populations.”

  “Is it important? Right now?”

  ”Sun-­wings threatened us with creatures beneath the sea. If inimical Griffins were created in a particular place, is it not likely the sea creatures would have been made in that same place? We haven’t put that on our list of problems, but it is a problem for us, isn’t it?”

  Fixit beamed at her. “So clever, this child. What is parentage of this child?” As though itself had not been intimately involved in the parenting of the child . . . well, intimate at one remove.

  Silence.

  Needly was used to hearing silence on that question. She said, “Grandma doesn’t know who fathered me; and she is surprised her daughter mothered me because her daughter is . . . not a competent person. At all.”

  While it was unlikely that anyone in the universe was more familiar with Trudis’s genetics than Fixit, he managed to keep his face in a properly listen-­and-­learn expression as Needly went on.

  “Nobody seems to know who fathered me or my siblings. There were at least two other girls and three boys born at the same time, and they all disappeared. ­People talked about a Silverhair being the father, but nobody knows who or where they are! Someone must know! Grandma really is my genetic grandmother, though, and my mother is really her daughter. I know Grandma thought for a while my father might be somebody from the Oracles.”

  “Male reproductive human not produced by Oracles,” said the galactic officer. Its face was twisted in a strange expression that conveyed revulsion, annoyance, and fury in about equal proportions. “Oracles not capable of reproducing hair follicle—­not even if given supplies, equipment, set of instructions, and trained assemblers!”

  Arakny cried, “Oh, but Fixit, they make wonderful things. When we went to see what the Edgers were doing, trying to make new bodies, the Oracles made us a portable camp, and it even provided for the horses—­”

  “DID . . . NOT . . . MAKE,” said the galactic officer with a scowl, or what they interpreted was intended as a scowl. “Please do not make Self say again! Oracles incapable of making anything more complicated than dung pile. Oracles are . . . plausible liars, actual idiots. Do you still have item?”

  “I do,” confessed Grandma in a choked voice. “We were going to return it to them.”

  She offered the crystal cube and Fixit took it from her, turning it about among several arms and hands. It pointed. “See, there, look close at corner, stamped in crystal: it says ‘Manufactured 243/584l7/0999epj1l7/.’ That is galactic date. Always galactic date is in numbers used on planet of purchase. It says ‘fct. Oxel 235.’ That means produced by Oxel factory 235. Oxel is very large manufacturing concern making very good equipment for interworld travelers, portable housing facilities, any size: factories 202 through 465 are set up on meteor belt of third planet of Ariaxne in the Frad system in this galaxy. One through 201 are in neighboring system.”

  Xulai cried, “Oh, I’d love to have one of those camps. Think how much easier it would make our job, Abasio. Hot water! And the children could stay clean! And so could I.”

  Abasio said, “And we could really sleep at night without keeping one ear open for assassins. Unfortunately, I don’t know what we’ve got that we don’t need that we could pay with, sweetheart.”

  Fixit murmured, “Leave that question for now. We will think of something. At moment I am interested in tying up loose ends. Are you familiar with resolution adopted by Galactic Supreme Council concerning extermination of mankind?”

  “You mean the reason why we’re being flooded,” said Abasio.

  “No, no. Flooding was informal decision made by
World Spirit of Earth, and assisted by two other world spirits. Resolution of Galactic Supreme Council was as follows: ‘Present mankind with problem they cannot evade; see if they will respond adequately, properly, and with bao. If not, then mankind will be mercifully expunged. If they respond sensibly, the council will work with them to improve their species.’ World Spirit pulled . . . REFERENCE needed! . . . carpet from beneath pedal extremities of council, but we have already discussed this. I am interested in knowing about this bao. Are you knowing what is bao?”

  As though I have not known about bao since I was a becoming-­person. First lesson ever taught to Balytaniwassinot, long before it became Fixit, first lesson taught any of our ­people is always about bao.

  “There’s that word again,” cried Arakny. “What is bao?”

  “Grandma knows,” said Needly. “She told me.”

  “So you can tell them,” said Grandma. “I’ve done enough telling.”

  For a moment Needly stared into the distance, arranging her thoughts. Abasio and Fixit took advantage of the pause to raid the cookie plates on the table. When quiet came and everyone seemed settled, Needly folded her hands in her lap and began.

  “Early mankind evolved sufficiently to create language, and this set them apart from other living creatures, so far as they knew, for while they were not the only creature with language, they were the only ones whose language they understood. They knew the earth was flat. They saw the sun rise in the east and sink in the west, so they knew it went around them each day. They saw the moon and stars do the same thing. It was obvious to them that they, humans, were at the center of everything, and since they were at the center, they assumed themselves to be the purpose for which sun and moon were made.” She stopped, taking a sip from her almost empty cup. Arakny, who had left the pot warmer on the table, refilled it for her.

  “Everything they saw reinforced their idea that man was at the center of everything. Stone was there for him to use as axes and pounders and spearheads. Animals and fish were there for him to eat. Shells found along the shore were good for making needles and beads. Fire was there to keep man warm and scare predators away. Women were there for pleasure and to make babies.

  “At night, around the fire, they listened to the old men, those who had lived many summers, tell the stories they had learned from their old ones. Those first old ones knew the list of names. First name was his father—­or perhaps the chief’s name. Next name was the father or chief before him. Next name was the one before that, and the one before that. They memorized the list of names and recited it around the fire, all the way back to the first man. The first man was the one who had started the list. Maybe there were eight names, or fifteen, or twenty, but the first name was the first man who ever was, the one the Creator had made. They recited this list of names and taught it to their sons, and when they learned to count, they even assigned these old ones a certain number of years of life. And because man was a maker of things, they knew everything had to have been made by something, the Great Maker.

  “Those who lived in the northern hemisphere watched the sun rise and saw that it came up in places that moved along the horizon from north to south. They learned the farther north the sun went, the warmer and longer the days were; the farther south it went, the colder and shorter the days were. They made a mark on the cave wall, one mark for each day as the sun moved back and forth, learning how many days it was from the longest day until the longest day came again. It was always the same number of days. The Great Maker had made it that way for man. Sometimes, however, the cold time went on past the proper line on the wall. The old men talked it over and decided the Maker might have gone to sleep and forgotten to put more fuel on the sun to make it hotter, so they built a big fire and danced around it, yelling, to wake up the Maker and get him to heat up the sun. It seemed like a good idea to do it every year when the temperature change was supposed to happen, just to remind the Maker they were there.

  “The old men were the ones who remembered all this. They were too old to go hunting, too old to fight off the lions, but they were the ones who remembered: they remembered the list of names, back to the first man, the way to mark off the year, the way to build the fire, and the right words to use when they reminded the Maker to send the sun back, the way they had fixed the wounds that healed well, the way the fever came and how it went away when they chewed willow bark, the way to the northern valleys where they went in summer to hunt deer. And gradually, over the centuries, the old men became a separate kind of being. They became a separate caste with knowledge of law and healing and dealing with the Maker. They were not all old. Perhaps a young man had been crippled in the hunting, he could join them to learn. There was so much to learn. They learned revelation, invocation, and nomination—­the laws by revelation, healing by invocation, and leaders by nomination. They became the shamans, the witch doctors, the priests . . .” She paused for a sip of water.

  Arakny asked, “Were there no women among them? No wise women?”

  “There were,” said Grandma, “but they were individuals, almost always. Loners. The men formed clubs, societies, often secret societies, passing the secret knowledge on to their sons. The women mostly stayed close to the earth, herbs, planting, animals. The men grew away from it. They forgot the actuality of creation and began to populate their visions with gods and spirits and demons. They became the first professionals by owning the three great professions. Law. Medicine. Religion. Interestingly enough, these fields at one time were held to be the only three in which highborn men—­that is, gentlemen—­could engage without polluting themselves with physical labor.” She turned toward her granddaughter. “Go on, Needly.”

  “When men invented writing, they finally had a way to preserve the knowledge of the old men by writing it down. They wrote the stories of their ancestors, of their histories, of their lineage. They wrote down the proper way to summon the Maker and remind him of his duty toward his ­people. They wrote down how man was at the center of everything, a particular favorite of the Maker. When they had finished, if anyone questioned the writings, they said the Maker himself had dictated what they had written down.”

  Grandma interrupted. “We must remember that all during these thousands of years before writing was invented, the stories were retold thousands of times, and the tribes separated and the stories were not remembered precisely the same by all of them, so the northern man might tell the story differently from the southern man, and so on. Even after writing came, there were differences.”

  Needly took a deep breath. “All the generations of life before that first-­remembered father were forgotten. All the generations of living without language, all the generations while language slowly emerged, all those generations before they learned to make fire, all the generations while they learned to make spears and clothing. All those forgotten generations were as if they had never been, but some things remained constant, the guiding beliefs of mankind: historic man had speech and writing; the universe had been created for historic man; everything had been created for him.” She paused, reaching for her cup, for her throat was dry.

  “May I help tell the story?” asked Arakny. Both Needly and Grandma nodded. “Once the old men had decided on something, it was hard for them to let go of it. When ­people learned the world was round, not flat, when ­people learned the earth went around the sun, not the sun around the earth, the old men owed their allegiance to the story rather than to the truth. Wise ­people, good ­people, tried to change the old men, but by that time the old men were powerful. They were kings with armies. They were religious leaders with their own kinds of armies, and they taught that the false was true and the truth was false. The world was flat. Their book said so. The sun went around the earth. The book said so. The world was four thousand years old. Look, count up the generations of men listed in the book, the book says so. The first man’s name was so and so. Their book said so. Women were the cause of sin an
d imperfection. The book said so. Truth was unimportant. Believe what’s in the book. Most ­people could not read in those times, and the important men didn’t want them to learn to read. They might not understand it. They might get the story wrong. They would read it themselves and tell men what to believe.”

  “Aha,” said Fixit, who had listened to all this with great attention. “But why was this believed? Did not all men have eyes, ears, senses? Could not all men think and measure?”

  Grandma said, “Of course they could. But the old men were in power. They had authority. They determined that everyone had to believe what they said, and if you didn’t believe it, they would torture you until you did, and if you still didn’t believe, they burned you to death. And if someone wrote a book that contradicted THE book, then they burned the book. They said no one should read any books but the ones they approved. Better yet, men shouldn’t bother learning to read, or shouldn’t bother reading if they already knew how: the old men would tell them what to think.”

  Arakny said grimly, “The old men had to build fences and gates around what ­people could think and read and believe so they wouldn’t stray. One gate was called ‘hell,’ for ­people who disobeyed them, and another gate was called ‘heaven,’ a reward for ­people who behaved properly and didn’t ask questions.”

  Grandma said grimly, “And the old men fought every new thing that was learned. If new discoveries were made, ­people must not be allowed to listen. They must not listen to the age of the earth, they must not listen to how man evolved, they must not listen to equality of women, they must not listen to restricting population. They must not listen to the truth, because the old men who ran things liked things just the way they were. With them in power. With riches and power coming from a steadily growing population, for the old men urged that man procreate without cease to build their armies.”